Interpretation based on content analysis differs from ethnographic study.  Though much like an ethnographer, I had to enter into the halls, classrooms, and meeting rooms of the school in order to study its culture from within, my inquiry did not end with a description of the culture of the school.  Rather, it was necessary to define that culture in terms of the educational ideals which were being pursued.  In thinking about this distinction, I considered Sam Heilman's compelling ethnographic study of a supplementary school, Inside the Jewish School. [i]    Heilman points to a recurring activity in the school which he calls “flooding out”: the students' constant defiance of the teacher's attempt to teach leads to a mutual moment of exasperation in which both sides submit to the absurdity and futility of the situation through laughter and resignation. “Flooding out” becomes an expression of informality and intimacy which the students and teachers would not be as likely to experience in a public school.  They experience something of a Jewish togetherness through “flooding out.”

As poignant as this sort of anthropological observation may be, for the purposes of content analysis it would still need to be translated to the language of education to serve as a basis for the kind of observation which needed to be made about Magnes.  First, since the aim of educational vision is to empower educators to carry out their commitments more effectively, content analysis must tilt the lens of observation to focus in on what the educators are consciously trying to pursue, how it is received, and the interplay between these two aspects.  Rather than attempting to describe a culture which governs both the actions of the teachers and the students, it seeks to recreate the drama of the classroom as it circulates between intentions, actions and outcomes.

Second, Heilman’s method of observation does not articulate what goes on in an educational setting in terms of educational ideas, assumptions and aims.  Even were we to assume that “flooding out” was an intentional activity aimed at creating a sense of Jewish togetherness, it would be important to describe the philosophical underpinnings of this quality: What is the rationale behind this sort of togetherness?  What is its Jewish content?  How does it respond to a lack in general education?  What is its nature and qualitative component?  What does it assume about human emotions in a group context?  Where is it meant to lead to?  In which way is it meant to connect with other experiences in the life of the learner?  What makes it work and what blocks it from taking hold?  In delineating these and other similar aspects of the aim of creating Jewish togetherness, one would be approaching a content analysis which more appropriately speaks in the language of educational vision.

For this purpose, Seymour Fox’s conception of the five levels of educational content was a valuable resource.[ii]   He suggests that the level of educational practice—pedagogy, classroom management, subject matter, curriculum, professional development, institutional culture, policy setting and administration—is the most prevalently discussed level of educational content.  This level necessarily reflects a series of governing ideas and suggests theoretical assumptions about the immediate goals of practice.  Fox calls the second level the theory of practice.  To take one example, repeated written exercises in the grammar of Biblical Hebrew may be interpreted at this level as reflecting a theory of language retention which emphasizes the goal of internalizing the defining rules of Biblical Hebrew. 

Ideas and goals at the level of the theory of practice may, however, be understood as expressions of a larger set of ideas and aims for education.  Fox calls this level the philosophy of education.   This level is concerned with a portrait of the educated person.  At this level, the retention of the rules of Biblical Hebrew through repeated written exercises may be understood as part of a larger effort to develop a Jew whose identity emerges through his or her capacity to read, interpret and understand interpretations of the Bible in the original.  This identity is defined in terms of occupation with issues of ultimate concern through the medium of classical Jewish sources. 

According to Fox’s approach, ideas and aims at the level of philosophy of education may also be understood in terms of a larger set of principles concerned with fundamental definitions of human existence, society, and knowledge.  He calls this level philosophy.   This would seem to be the level which is the furthest away from the visible aspects of educational practice, but it is also most profoundly definitive of the practice of education and as such, it actually determines much of what transpires in education.  At this level, the definition of Jewish identity in terms of grappling with issues of ultimate concern through the medium of classical Jewish sources may be understood in terms of a larger definition of the human being as a religious being whose consciousness is determined by ideas which are reflected in sacred objects.   This understanding would have to be based on explicit definitions of religion, identity, cognition and ritual.

At the other extreme, Fox identifies a fifth level at which the outcomes of educational practice may be analyzed.  This is the level at which the success or failure of practice is perceived or actively determined once it has been completed.  Fox sees this level as consisting of monitoring and evaluation. At this level, the success of repeated written exercises in Hebrew grammar might be determined by the learner’s capacity to undertake such exercises successfully on his or her own.  However, the other levels would suggest that success must also be understood in terms of the learner’s propensity to do so as part of his or her commitment to a values system. 

Though in my work at Magnes I did not apply Fox’s five levels formulaically, his theory was helpful in organizing my observations in terms of a continuum running from ideas to practice and back again.  It was possible to place any particular expression of Magnes’s vision among these five elements and explore it more fully by trying to rearticulate it in terms of the other elements.

At the same time, the content analysis that I pursued to understand "what Magnes is" was not nearly as systematic or comprehensive as Heilman’s research.  Nor was I aiming to undertake a formal content analysis for the Magnes school, the kind of that Fox had suggested as part of a strategy for research on goals in local settings.  That strategy involved undertaking a large scale and systematic effort to analyze a school’s educational program, pedagogy, culture, student perceptions, etc., and then present the findings to decision-makers and educators so that they may ask themselves “is this what we are aiming for?”  I also wanted to create a basis for discourse on goals by making explicit and calling into question the educational vision implicit in Magnes’s practice.  However, at this early stage, the aims of my content analysis were much more modest.  As stated above, I wanted to learn enough about Magnes’s implicit vision to be able to initiate from within a discussion about “what Magnes ought to be.”  Pointing out discrepancies between ideal and actual content was unnecessary.  At this stage, I wanted to draw out what was implicitly ideal so that it could be a resource for thinking about what could be actual.